


he is the moon when I am lost

by Atlanta_Black



Series: Harry Potter One-shots [19]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - The Old Guard (Movie 2020) Fusion, F/M, Immortals, New immortals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26115154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atlanta_Black/pseuds/Atlanta_Black
Summary: Lily Potter wakes up, green still burning the back of her eyelids. The sound of her own heartbeat so loud in her ears that for a long while she lays on the floor, staring at the ceiling, unable to comprehend anything but the absurdity of her own life. The absurdity of her chest moving up and down as if moments ago she hadn’t been struck with an unblockable curse. She should not be here, lying on the hard floor, dust hanging in the air when she knows,she knows, she had died, had died screaming and begging for—Or, death doesn't stick well to the Potter's.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Series: Harry Potter One-shots [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1875151
Comments: 7
Kudos: 143





	he is the moon when I am lost

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't stopped thinking about The Old Guard since I watched it tbh I can't imagine I'll be stoping anytime soon.

Lily Potter wakes up, green still burning the back of her eyelids. The sound of her own heartbeat so loud in her ears that for a long while she lays on the floor, staring at the ceiling, unable to comprehend anything but the absurdity of her own life. The absurdity of her chest moving up and down as if moments ago she hadn’t been struck with an unblockable curse. She should not be here, lying on the hard floor, dust hanging in the air when she knows, _she knows_ , she had died, had died screaming and begging for—

Her heartbeat fades back into the background, Harry’s cries breaking through her baffled stupor, causing her to lurch to her feet and rush to his cot, relief flooding her body when she finds him alive and whole. 

A second glance-over reveals a livid red scar in the middle of his forehead, likely the source of his crying. A glance around the room, Harry clutched tight to chest _(where her heart still beats)_ reveals a pile of black robes directly to her right that she knows were not there before, before… before she was murdered, and so, she concludes, they must belong to the (former?) dark lord. 

She has to carefully sit Harry back in his cot so that she can go throw up in a corner. There are no feet pounding on the stairway, there is no voice, warm and worried, calling her name. She knows what this means and her stomach hurts, her heart is still beating and she doesn’t understand. 

Harry is still crying and she drags herself upright, forcing her stomach to stop rebelling and goes and picks him back up, rocking him carefully as she paces a small circle around the smoking room. She does not want to walk down those stairs, does not want to see—

She doesn’t want to and she curses herself for this when she hears a door bang open, footsteps clambering up the steps and here is she, still wandless, Harry clutched to her chest. She sits him back in the cot, deja vu sweeping over her in waves. She does not know really what happened before. She knows what she did to protect Harry but it should not have protected her. Regardless, she moves to stand in front of him again and nearly crumples in relief when instead of a death eater, it’s Sirius who barges through the doorway with wild eyes and grief stained cheeks. 

“Oh thank merlin,” he rasps out, sagging against the doorframe, eyes darting to Harry behind her. “Thank merlin and Morgana and whatever else is out there.”

“Sirius, is he—” her voice breaks, she takes a step forward, hope rising regardless of how useless she knows it is. “Is James?”

He presses trembling lips together tightly, eyes closing, gives a sharp shake of his head and she, she wishes, she doesn’t, she wishes she was with him but she doesn’t. Harry needs her. She needs James. And she can’t, she doesn’t know how. She presses a shaking fist to her mouth and breathes in and out, forces herself to breath. 

She doesn’t yet have time to grieve. 

“We need to leave,” she says, watching as Sirius goes and picks Harry up, cradling him close. “We need to get Remus, we need to leave.” She doesn’t know what’s happened, or why she’s… she doesn’t know. But she knows they need to leave, can feel the truth of it in her bones. 

“What? Lily, why? He’s dead!” Sirius points a finger at the mess of robes on the floor and she shakes her head, presses a fist to her still beating heart. 

“I died,” she whispers, watches Sirius go pale. “I died, he hit me with the killing curse and _I died_ and then I woke up. We have to leave, I just, I can feel it, we need to go, right now.”

“Shit,” he chokes out, buries his face in Harry’s hair. 

“We _need_ to go,” she says again, magic thrumming anxiously. 

“Yeah, yeah, okay, do you need to grab anything? Anything for Harry?”

“We’ve had bags packed since we got here,” she tells him, moving towards their room as Sirius trails behind her. “We would have run but…” she swallows, yanks open the closet and grabs the bags, hand hovering over the one for James for a long minute. 

In the end she grabs it, if for no reason other than she doesn’t know when, or if she’ll be able to come back and collect anything else of his and she has to have, she needs—

“Okay,” she mutters, handing Sirius Harry’s bag and eyeing the room critically for a moment. She can’t think of anything else she might need from the room but with how cotton littered her thoughts feel at the moment that doesn’t mean much. “I need to,” she waves her hand at the stairs, swallowing hard and Sirius nods, mouth pinched. 

“I can…” he starts, half heartedly holding Harry out to her but she shakes her head, picking up the bags and walking past him. 

“I need to do this,” she tells him, swallowing down a sob. “He deserves that from me.”

Sirius doesn’t reply but she can hear him follow her from the room, Harry sniffling quietly in his arms. She’s never been happier to have Sirius around. Isn’t sure she could do this alone. Isn’t sure she could bear to hold Harry why pulling James’ ring from his finger. Isn’t sure—

She stops at the bottom of the stairs, heart lurching painfully at the sight of him splayed on the floor, legs bent and fingers tapping….

She blinks. Tilts her head. Takes another step forward and then swallows down a scream, that she knows would scare Harry, when James blinks his eyes open to look at her. Although, considering his glasses are shattered, she doubts that he’s really seeing her. 

The burst of relief that spreads through her gives way quickly to anger and it’s that anger that has her stomping forward and dropping his bag directly on his stomach. 

Sirius cries out in alarm, clearly wondering if she’s gone mad, the sound cutting off when James chokes, sitting up in alarm, taking his glasses off to blink up at her. 

He blinks up at her silently for a minute as she stands there, hands balled into fists, shaking with rage. How dare he lay here while she stood upstairs thinking he was dead. How dare he. 

“Lily?” He asks softly, hesitantly, fingers stretched forward and just like that the anger evaporates. 

“You ass,” she chokes out, grasping his fingers in her own and dropping to her knees. “You fucking ass, I thought you were dead.” 

“Are we not dead then?” He asks, squinting at her and sounding terribly lost. “I should be dead.”

“As should I,” she says softly, presses a kiss to his hand, to his cheek. Thanks whatever deity is out there that they hadn’t taken him from her. 

“Lily, you said we needed to go right?” Sirius questions tightly, peering out the window anxiously. 

“Is someone…?”

“Yeah, think it’s Hagrid.”

“Shit, come on love, time to go.” 

“Why are we running from Hagrid?” James asks bemused, taking his fixed glasses from her thankfully. 

“I just, we need to go. We shouldn’t even be alive and I—” she bites her lip, glances around and hurriedly grabs James’ wand from the side table where the idiot had left it. “I just think we need to leave. Can’t you feel it?”

He grimaces, runs a hand through his hair as he glances around the room, eyes falling on Harry. “Yeah,” he says quietly, “I can feel it.” 

“Where to?” Sirius asks, backing away from the window. “He’s nearly to the door.”

“To Remus, we’ll regroup there.” 

He nods and is gone in a flash. She surges forward, presses another desperate thankful kiss to James’s mouth, and twists in a flash, safe in the knowledge that he’ll only be seconds behind her. 

They all spin to back into existence in Remus’s too small living room, Remus himself sitting on the couch looking exhausted, even as he jolts upright at their arrival. 

“Sirius, Lily…what? Why are you…?” 

James spins into existence next to her, reaching for her hand as soon as he lands. 

“Good news Moony,” James says cheerfully despite his death grip on her hand. “All those times you told me I’d get myself killed pulling reckless stunts, turns out death doesn’t seem to quite stick.” 

Remus stares at them with wide eyes, taking in their shaking hands and Sirius’s protective hand curled around the back of Harry’s head. “I think I’ll need some tea for this conversation,” he says faintly, standing and moving towards the kitchen. 

Lily wholeheartedly agrees.  


➳

  



End file.
